


Honeybees and The Hazards of Falling in Love

by Empyralnova



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood Friends, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Heavy Angst, KuroKen - Freeform, M/M, Moving On, Separation, Suffering, Their life told in time lapses, Unrequited Love, or so it seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 04:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10325576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empyralnova/pseuds/Empyralnova
Summary: “What thing?” Kenma groused, eyebrows drawn into a grumpy expression. He hated how observant Kuroo could be when he actually cared enough to try.“This thing.” Kuroo swiftly reached his hand upwards, fingertips smoothing out the frown painted in Kenma’s eyebrows. “When you think too much and your thoughts get too loud and it hurts to hear them.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo!! Guess who's back on Archive writing for a new fandom this time!! :P I've been meaning to write some Kuroken for ages now because it's that one ship that always ends in me crying in a pathetic pool of my own tears. That being said, I spent way too much time cooking this up late last night at 2:30 am, so please be wary of any mistakes. My old archive name was AmazingFouton so if you've read any of my ONS stuff, hi hello welcome to this emo shitpost! :D Happy reading!

Kuroo shut the door to Kenma’s room, the final goodbye, the noise that will haunt both boys late into lonely nights. He left without another word and Kenma heard the door close, resolute in its resonance. Unaware of the tears staining his sheets, he burrowed into his blankets further. Maybe if he slept, he’d be able to forget the last decade of his life. The last ten years of living alongside Kuroo. 

– Age 7 –

Kenma hated public parks. He hated that there was a place specifically designed for kids to have fun in the fresh air when there was nothing particularly appealing about ‘fresh air’ to him. Grass stains clothing far too easily and hornets looked cool, until they thought you did too and invaded your personal space. He’d much rather spend his afternoons battling the dungeon boss on his PSP but his mother had different plans. A faculty picnic at her workplace yielded a trip to the park which resulted in Kenma becoming personally acquainted with a hornet and its stinger. Definitely not his ideal afternoon. 

Nursing his wound, Kenma waited for his mother patiently by a tree adjacent to where her coworkers had set up their snacks. Ideally, he’d want his mother to take a look and fix his brutal injury herself, but that would require approaching the massive table of adults, so Kenma didn’t mind bearing his battle scar for the time being. Distracted by the dull throbbing in his thumb, the young Kenma paid no attention to the wily boy who sat down next to him, curious eyes honing in on the younger’s injury.

“Hey, doesn’t that hurt?!” Kenma visibly flinched when the strange boy with the weird hair voiced his concern in a rather loud and brash tone, paying no attention to his proximity to Kenma’s ear. Kenma nodded but scooted away, much like a frightened cat, in an attempt to put some distance between him and the boy with no sense for personal space. 

“Here, let me see. My dad was a doctor.” Not waiting for a reply (since he figured none would be provided), Kuroo took hold of Kenma’s thumb, quite gently for a kid who didn’t know how to talk quietly. His abrasive nature was not appreciated by Kenma, who didn’t know how to react to other people in general, even children his age. Nonetheless, Kenma didn’t mind him taking a look, since his dad was a doctor so he must know what he’s doing. To a seven-year-old, it made perfect sense.

“Listen, you’re not going to die. Not on my watch. Mom is over there with her lady friends so I’m sure she’ll know how to patch you right up!” Lightly taking Kenma’s elbow, so as not to hurt his thumb, he helped the younger up from his perch near the tree. Noting how nervous he looked, Kuroo beamed reassuringly. 

“Don’t worry! She’s real nice, just like me. I’m Kuroo, by the way!” Kenma relaxed slightly, glad to see the boy doesn’t mind his lack of participation in this conversation. Offering up a small smile, he nodded and motioned for Kuroo to lead the way.

Approaching the picnic table of adults, coincidently the same one where Kenma’s mother was sat at, Kuroo skidded over to where his mother was sitting. 

“Mom this boy’s dying, I need you to do something!” Kuroo yelled and noting the urgency in his tone, Kenma’s mother made her way over, extreme concern painting her features. 

“Kenma what happened!! We were only here for twenty minutes, oh my god.” Kenma shrugged, lifting up his hurt thumb as an answer. Both mothers visibly relaxed when they saw what it was but Kuroo stood his ground firmly, hand tightly wound around Kenma’s uninjured one. 

“See mom! Dying!” The table erupted in laughter and Kenma for once didn’t mind the crowd. He didn’t quite feel like he was dying and Kuroo’s hand kept him grounded rather nicely amongst the clamor. 

– Age 9 – 

“So do you like, hate hornets now?” Kuroo asked, his hands tossing a volleyball into the air dismissively. He was flopped on Kenma’s bed, head hanging off the edge and body splayed across the comforter. Kenma sat next to him on the floor, close enough to flick Kuroo’s forehead. 

“Of course, not dummy. Besides, it was a honeybee,” Kenma replied coolly, slender fingers bravely trekking their way through the virtual maze on his console screen.   
“I heard the bees were dying Kenma. I think we need to save the bees,” was Kuroo’s only response, the jab completely going over his head.

“You said the same thing about me,” Kenma killed another menacing pixel imp and Kuroo launched the volleyball upwards once more. 

“You could have died if I didn’t save you. Your thumb looked like a tomato, it was so swollen!” Kenma shrugged trying to remember the incident. Yes, his thumb had hurt but he couldn’t recall any bodily disfigurations resembling a tomato taking place. Besides, meeting Kuroo was an unwelcome yet rather pleasant distraction from the pain. 

“Kenma, I want to save the honeybees. I have to thank them somehow,” Kuroo whispered, ball flying into the air before landing in his arms, securely. He hugged it firmly against his chest, anticipating Kenma’s answer.

“Why would you ever want to thank a honeybee, Kuroo?” The younger boy paused his game, mission on hold as curiosity took over his better judgement. 

“Because thanks to that bee, I met my best friend.”

– Age 11 – 

“I will pay you in Legend of Zelda figurines if you do this for me,” Kuroo vowed, palm clutching his chest in promise. His other hand held a form for middle school volleyball team tryouts. Kenma rolled his eyes from his resting spot on the floor, looking unamused as the latter stood planted outside the bedroom door. 

“Idiot you can’t afford those,” Kenma replied, casually fingering through his gaming magazine, taking note of where the writers said to find in game freebies. He was only vaguely paying attention to Kuroo’s absurd proposition. Taking up a sport meant losing screen time and, to Kenma, that sounded as unappealing as a public park picnic. 

“I’ll sell my kidney – no my liver! No better yet, my heart! I have the best heart!” Kuroo exclaimed, bouncing up and down excitedly at his proposed solution. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal Kuroo,” Kenma shot down his money scheme once more. The latter, now at a loss for words, slumped to the ground sadly and Kenma took the opportunity to wrench the forms from his hand.

The younger boy gave them a cursory glance, mentally recording the amount of effort he’d have to dedicate towards volleyball in order to satisfy Kuroo’s love of the sport. 

“I guess I do owe you. At least this much,” Kenma voiced this conclusion indifferently, but that statement sounded like Christmas to Kuroo. 

“Wait really you’ll join?! For me?!” Kuroo leaped over to Kenma’s side, wrangling his best friend into a bone-crushing hug. The latter squirmed in his grasp, loving the attention but not trying to let Kuroo know that, in all honesty, he was happy too. 

“Well, I never did properly thank you for saving my life back then,” Kenma giggled, large golden eyes alight with mirth and joy. It was not often that Kuroo heard his best friend laugh, and ever since they met, it had always been his favorite sound. 

Never had it sounded so beautiful as it did right then.

– Age 13 –

“Kenma! I almost didn’t recognize you, why the new hair?” Kuroo gushed, hands immediately delving into the blonde’s tresses, almost as if to test the durability of the hair dye. 

“Quit it, Kuroo,” Kenma bit back with no real malice in his voice. “I just wanted change. You know something to make me less noticeable,” Kenma explained earnestly, his voice causing Kuroo to pause in his movements, hands frozen in Kenma’s hair. The older boy could not comprehend as to why Kenma might want to remain invisible, he was so talented and so pretty. He was Kenma – a name practically synonymous with wonderful. Sure others might have different opinions, but in Kuroo’s eyes, his best friend was a force to be reckoned with. 

Removing his hands from the newly-dyed hair, Kuroo pulled the younger boy into a warm hug and held him close. Startled by the gesture, Kenma quickly wound his arms around his best friend in reciprocation. 

“I think you look beautiful,” Kuroo said, head laying on top of the blonde’s shoulder. “If you let your roots grow out brown, you’d look kind of like a honeybee.” 

– Age 15 – 

“You ever been kissed Kenma?” Kuroo poked the younger in the cheek as he attempted to catch his breath after a short round of laps in Kuroo’s backyard. Now that his best friend was in high school all Kenma ever heard of was how all Kuroo’s classmates were confessing to each other. The subject matter of who loved who was always in the air and Kuroo was often the object of such admiration. A prolific volleyball player despite being a first year and rather handsome even if he hadn’t fully developed yet, it was almost painfully obvious to Kenma that such situations were inevitable. 

“Of course not… Who would kiss me anyway?” Kenma murmured harshly, breathing evened out after their arduous warm up. It was the first time the two met up in a while, what with Kuroo working hard in his academics and Kenma struggling with his volleyball team. Kenma’s had always had a rocky relationship with his teammates, mostly because the young setter was too damn talented for his own good. That and his inseparable bond with Kuroo made him out to be an object of envy, an easy target. Throughout Kuroo’s last year in middle school, Kenma was harassed constantly, made a mockery of by his jealous upperclassmen. The public humiliation came to an abrupt end when his elders graduated, but they left their stain on Kenma nonetheless and without his best friend to hold his hand through locker room panic attacks and pre-game pep talks, the setter found himself quickly sinking. Kenma didn’t want his negativity to drag the team down but it hurt to walk down that court alone.

“Hey – hey Kenma! You’re doing that thing again.” Kuroo gripped Kenma’s forearm gently, applying just enough pressure to snap the latter out of his pitiful reverie. He sat down on the grass and patted the soil next to him, motioning for Kenma to do the same.

“What thing?” Kenma groused, eyebrows drawn into a grumpy expression. He hated how observant Kuroo could be when he actually cared enough to try.

“This thing.” Kuroo swiftly reached his hand upwards, fingertips smoothing out the frown painted in Kenma’s eyebrows. “When you think too much and your thoughts get too loud and it hurts to hear them,” Kuroo whispered breath fanning over Kenma’s exertion-induced rouge cheeks. “It’s just a couple of months and then we’ll be on the same team again. And everything will be okay.”  
“Promise me Kuroo, promise that. Can you swear I’ll be okay?” Kenma murmured in reply, eyes searching through the veil of emotions muted in the elder’s expression. 

“Yes. In fact, let’s do a pact.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kenma asked, now very much aware of how close they were and the rapid acceleration of his faint heart. 

“I want to promise you this. That you will be more than okay. That one day, things will not hurt like they do right now. Can you let me swear to you Kenma?” Kuroo asked leaning in, lips a hair way from touching Kenma’s, his question an inquiry for permission. 

“Yes.” Neither were certain of who closed the distance, but their lips met, inexperienced and unexposed to intimacy. It was not mind-blowing nor euphoric, but a chaste affair. An exchange of soft contact and wanderlust, as well as a mutual unspoken sentiment of ‘what I would give to do it again.’

That was how Kozume Kenma lost his first kiss to his best friend, a platonic action of trust that would soon blossom into something more. Something scary and unrequited, in Kenma’s eyes. The promise only to be fulfilled briefly before being shattered. 

– Age 16 ¬– 

“Kenma, help me choose what to wear on this freaking date. I’m so nervous,” Kuroo tittered anxiously, pointing at his closet in desperation. The two had been swaddled in a bombardment of blankets beforehand, bodies pressed close together as Kenma twiddled away on his Nintendo and Kuroo admired the graphics from Kenma’s shoulder. A quick glance at the clock quickly melted the placid atmosphere away, as Kuroo now contemplated life or death staring into his pathetic selection of suitable date attire. 

“The black jeans make your ass look nice, if that’s any help?” Kenma suggested, far too busy with his gameplay to pay real attention to the problem at hand. Not the problem of Kuroo’s clothing, or lack thereof. More so the issue of the tightening in his chest and the shortness of breath that had nothing to do with temperature, seeing without Kuroo to share the blankets, Kenma felt he had been doused in a bucket of iced water. Or maybe the acute lack of oxygen was just his brain, telling his nerves to do something about the mayday situation surfacing in his heart. To do anything to stop Kuroo from leaving. 

“No, no, this is good Kenma, this is great! You’ve got anything to make me look better from the waist up?” Kuroo asked, Cheshire cat smile splitting his face in two and arms making a mad dash towards that godly pair of jeans. 

“Your face can’t be helped – Aww Kenma, rude! – But your white tank top and red blazer might distract from that,” the younger replied teasingly, trying to hide his distaste in the increasing pressure he was applying to his joystick. In his despair, the blonde’s warrior accidently fell off a cliff. Insincere promises to keep himself together painted Kenma’s mind.  
Nothing of it, nothing at all. Just respawn and avoid Kuroo’s eyes. 

“You’re a genius kitten,” Kuroo purred approvingly, grabbing his clothes before giving Kenma a quick kiss on the head. “I’m going to go change in the bathroom downstairs, I’ll see you when I get back,” Kuroo smirked, dashing out the door without another word. 

It seems Kenma chose the wrong day to sleep over. 

– Age 17 ¬– 

“So are you two going to go out again, anytime soon?” Kenma asked, arms wrapped around Kuroo’s as the taller of the two acted as the big spoon. Anyone who knew the pair were aware of how strangely intimate they acted and saw nothing of it but Kenma knew it was somewhat displeasing for his best friend’s girlfriends. 

“Kenma, we had one date four months ago. One. And I was dying to come home the entire time because I didn’t know whether or not your warrior saved the wizard,” Kuroo answered, laughter dancing around the edges of his words as he brought Kenma closer to his chest. Oddly enough, in a few days he wouldn’t be able to do this. 

How peculiar and foreign and frightening. Proximity with Kenma was all he relied on when life fueled itself on calamity, college applications, and test scores. Kuroo deduced that the pain in his chest had nothing to do with his GPA. It was a matter of separation, of proximity. It was always a matter of intimacy. 

“My warrior was pathetic. He kept falling off the stupid in game cliff,” Kenma groaned, frustration pooling in his fingertips at the memory of how utterly useless he’d been that day, how utterly useless he’d been for a while before and thereafter. Kuroo. It was his fault. The idiot with the dumb hair that looks like he took a weedwhacker to the head and the smile that melts sneers and the eyes that scribble themselves into the nooks on Kenma’s ceiling when his nights are spent alone. All his fault… always his fault. 

“Kenma…” Kuroo spoke a while after their warrior discussion. “Who will hold you when I’m gone?”

“No one, I guess.” The blonde pondered as to where the latter would draw out this much-debated conversation. It wasn’t the first time they talked about their inevitable separation, after all.   
“Will you miss me kitten?” the elder questioned, arms tightening and eyes shutting. 

“Do I have any other choice, Kuroo?” Kenma let the unspoken implication of his rhetorical inquiry linger.

“Will you be okay, kitten?” Kuroo’s voiced hushed at the world outside the room, begging for a borrowed eternity where he could let Kenma know how much he loved him.   
“I don’t think I will.” 

For the first time, Kuroo’s question was answered honestly.   
And days later, the promise was broken and the door shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Well I hope that wasn't too terrible! If you wanna cry together about how these two deserve happiness, hmu on either my instagram or tumblr. 
> 
> Instagram: empyralnova (I use this most often)
> 
> Tumblr (I change URLs constantly but as of rn it is): straight-for-mikaela 
> 
> Let me know what you liked or didn't like in the comment section - I'd really appreciate it!


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